On the palisades,

three unclaimed shoes.

The bald sun now floats in them.

Where do dead men keep their shoes?

I am asking because

a beautiful boy now buries acorns in them.

I come from a long line of Plathian

scions; aching mothballs

with damask-wings hanging from a baluster.

One blue morning

a mustang kissed a field of peonies

someone’s gentle heart stopped.

Listen to his shoes walk to the marketplace

without him.

Like Rilke, my mother

dresses my little body in the face of a mirror.

The washing machine

in the background thrums white noise

like jaded snow

in a vast landscape of terrycloth.

She is no longer here with us.

Even now, some shoes remain

too big to fill.

If not by others, most assuredly by you.